The field of the disclosure relates generally to aircraft cockpit displays and more particularly, to methods and systems for depicting own ship on aircraft cockpit displays and charting devices.
At least some known aircraft include cockpit displays use charts and other information displays that aid in navigation and situational awareness. For example, charts displayed on electronic displays, referred to herein as electronic charts, typically are used for a wide variety of aspects of flight and flight planning. However, certain elements on such electronic charts may be difficult to read. One reason for this difficulty is that such electronic charts are formatted in the same fashion as paper charts.
On paper aviation charts, for example, the north indicator is placed in the upper right corner of the chart. As the electronic charts are patterned after the paper charts, current digital charting applications also show the north indicator in a static position. The north indicator or compass rose is required to be shown on charting applications but is placed as a chart overlay symbol in a static position, requiring a user to move their view from the own ship indicator to another screen location to determine orientation.
Such digital charting applications may allow the user to switch an appearance of the digital chart from a north up orientation to a heading up orientation depending on the selected/current mode. On certain flight instruments the own ship symbol is found in the heading indicator. However and as stated above, such configurations require a user to change their view and focus away from the own ship indicator to determine an orientation.
In summary, existing solutions have two separate elements for own ship depiction and north indicator depiction which are located at different locations on the map and therefore a pilot has to scan both elements to get an overall understanding of the current aircraft state.